SANCOR Newsletter Issue #170: June 2002

 

 SEAWATCH

A SHOWCASE FOR JO’BURG’S WSSD

All eyes will be on Johannesburg in September, when the city hosts the World Summit for Sustainable Development (WSSD). One of South Africa’s showcase projects at the WSSD could be the development of Seawatch South Africa (SSA), a marine environmental monitoring and surveillance system that has been used in several other countries to, among other things, monitor key environmental parameters, improve weather forecasting, encourage safety at sea and optimise mariculture and other coastal activities.

A key proposal of the last World Summit, which took place in Rio de Janeiro in 1992, was the establishment of a Global Ocean Observing System (GOOS) to underpin climate forecasts and the sustainable use of the oceans. Seawatch South Africa (Seawatch SA) is a building block for GOOS; however, its establishment is likely to be something of a "photo-finish", with the Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism and its South African partners currently involved in hasty negotiations with Dutch partners in an effort to have a demonstration Seawatch SA project up-and-running by September.

 

The Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, through its Marine and Coastal Management (MCM) branch, has earmarked R3.7 million from the Marine Living Resources Fund as "seed funding" for the project. Dutch partners are expected to meet this financial commitment and the Department hopes to attract additional funding from the Norwegian government, through its development agency, NORAD - a long time supporter of MCM.

 

 

South African partners are MCM, the Institute of Maritime Technology (Pty) Ltd., representing the SA Navy’s interests, CSIR Environmentek, the Centre for Marine Studies at the University of Cape Town, shipping company Smit Pentow Marine and the South African Weather Services.

The first phase of Seawatch SA will entail the deployment of a bright orange, Norwegian / Dutch manufactured buoy that will initially be moored in Table Bay during the WSSD demonstration phase. The buoy, which is solar powered, may be fitted with a variety of sensors and antennae which would enable it to relay "ocean intelligence" via satellite to an operation centre. Here data would be collected, analysed and distributed in real-time via the Internet, according to the needs and specifications of the users.

 

The information gathered by the buoy would include temperature variation in the water column, wind speed and direction and water quality (biological and mineral composition). The potential for Sea watch buoys to boost South Africa’s surveillance of fishing activities in the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), makes the system even more attractive to MCM which has yet to solve the problem of illegal fishing for Patagonian toothfish around the Prince Edward Islands in the Southern Ocean.

Other advantages of the Seawatch SA project include: